Powerfully Vulnerable

I often remember a conversation I had with a student as I walked through the Emperor’s Summer Palace in Beijing bank in 1998. She asked me what I meant about being vulnerable. It is to stand without protection, to be open to what is, enabling us to engage in the moment from a place of personal power. By removing all the patterns, behaviours, attitudes and beliefs that we have developed in response to past pain we are able to truly respond from our own power. Pain we experience comes from:

• dashed expectations (the future not unfolded as we anticipated and desired);
• broken attachments (connects to our past which have become severed and no longer serve to satisfy our needs, whether through loss of loved ones, changes to job and other circumstances, or a myriad of other things we hold on to); and
• breached protections (all our patterns and behaviours that we surround ourselves with to remain safe, but that in an instant may prove futile, leaving us hurting).

An oak tree is strong and spends many years developing, but when a powerful wind comes it can break, its protection insufficient to withstand the onslaught. A blade of grass has little protection, is blown over, even gets cut down, but it bounces back. That was my metaphor for vulnerability.

I am again in the process of learning to be powerfully vulnerable. I have generally struggled to speak my truth when I fear it may hurt someone else, cause them to feel upset or some other perceived negative outcome may exist. I have identified a number of behaviours and patterns that have served to protect me in the past that now impede my capacity to present myself authentically. I am not suggesting I blurt out what I have to say in raw, ill-considered form, but I do believe I need to be better able to clearly express myself without holding back, though the delivery is delivered from a place of love. I recognise I have patterns and beliefs that prevent such clear self-expression:

• my needs are subservient to those of others
• expressing myself is to make a fuss, to seek attention, and these are to be avoided
• my safety is dependent on not upsetting those around me
• others do not really want to hear what I have to say
• I do not matter, am unworthy, and unacceptable, particularly if I express myself

I do understand where these beliefs developed, what purpose and benefit they have served me, and that they no longer serve me productively. It is now time to strip these away and allow myself to be seen, though the process necessarily requires me to engage with the world from a place of vulnerability. At least in doing so I am less cluttered, and those who see me for who I am have less rubbish from me between us. I will be better able to connect with myself and be present powerfully in the world. Sounds good, and scary.

Significance of Feeling and Needs

This past week has been a rollercoaster ride. My project completed. Substantially complete and is now in the turmoil of potential change that renders roughly 50% of the effort redundant. I have found it difficult to remain motivated. I have fulfilled my role of leading the team through yet another assault on their work product and the achievements genuinely delivered and it has been difficult to maintain form, structure and leadership in these circumstances. I have felt unmotivated and have low energy myself, but I press on being staunch.

I came out of yesterday feeling highly anxious, physical pain having been felt across my gut, just below the diaphragm for a number of days. I connected with feeling tired, fear that I would not enjoy peace, nor my needs of space, ease, rest, nurturing connection, and tenderness. I realised I was in a familiar mode of offering others love and support, helping them work with the tension, but was not offering any love and support to myself. I recognise that in planning to go away for the weekend with my loved one, I feel afraid of my peace and ease being lost in favour of some issues being tabled that suck me dry of energy. With clarity that my needs are for ease, peace, and to know I matter, I can assert myself and what I need from the holiday, place myself first in my life, and really open to the possibility that my needs can be met, and others can and may choose to support me in doing so. Even if they did not, I can still take time and space for myself and ensure I satisfy those needs myself.

So often our lives are full of confusion, tension and chaos arising from ignoring what we feel and divorcing ourselves from our needs, filling up our lives with unmet needs, and the associated fog of confusion and loss of identity, As we allow ourselves to connect to the needs we have within, we are getting more intimate with ourselves, and the call of fog to our souls and its offer that we get more intimate with ourselves is getting positively answered.

The Psychotic Within

The past week has been a fascinating experience of seeing and engaging with the man within me with murderous intent against me. I am training in Psychodrama, a therapeutic method for working with groups and manifesting the truth within on a stage, using the group as actors/auxiliaries in the drama. There is a woman in the group who, last year, was my lover, and who suddenly decided to depart, and I felt hurt, anger, rage, sad and alone. I found plenty of healing within was required to move through the debris of the situation. This past weekend as I was in training, I found myself observing her. She was alive, comfortable, free, clearly blossoming and shining as a person, solid and beautiful in her presence. The more I saw and admired her, the more I connected with and understood the love I felt, and do feel for her. That was a beautiful and freeing experience.
However, I also experienced another voice within, that started up quietly and grew through the weekend. The gist of the voice was “She is so beautiful and gorgeous, no wonder she left because you are dirty and filthy and there is no way someone as beautiful as she is would choose to have you in their life.” To call the voice vicious is an understatement. I would have preferred to have had a chance to do a drama and bring out that part of me and work with it. Instead, the opportunity was not available to me. I experienced much distress as, at one point I became overwhelmed by my own vicious attacks, and felt shattered and defenceless.
I subsequently had a dream. I was on a very dark uphill path from a set of cabins and heading to my sleeping quarters. I met a man. In the darkness he attacked me. He punched me, kicked me, and mercilessly and relentlessly laid into me. Murder was his intent. I escaped somehow, finally reaching my cabin. I found my mattress rolled up, and as I was standing on steps to the upper bunk bed, the man opened my cabin door. Futilely I attempted to slam it shut, but he got inside, and I awoke, knowing he was going to kill me. I knew the man in the dream with such vicious intent was me, and I knew he was out in strength, long time buried, because of the experience with my ex-lover, and other events of the past week.
I recognise that he developed in me when, as a child my father left the family when I was seven, and I tried answering my own question: why did he leave me? My answer was: because I am not good enough for him. Over the years that voice was strengthened to my psychotic killer of self as I did things I judged as evil and wrong. Sexual desires as a developing young man were among the myriad of feelings and expressions that I judged as bad, indicative of my evil, and piece by piece my vicious self-destructive self was developed. I am thrilled now that I am able to work with this part of me, a part that over the years has taken many forms and intensities, and that now I am prepared to engage with and resolve. This is an example of my inner world that creates fog for me to work with, and maybe now I can change its intent as I find a new way of being within, train and develop a kinder, gentler person as those who know me see in the external world. What a fabulous opportunity to heal myself, and resolve some inappropriate aspects developed by myself as a growing child and teenager who wanted to understand some things that did not have good answers, but as a child had to be “my fault”. We can create so much pain for ourselves simply by attempting to interpret a world we are not equipped to comprehend as a child, or even as an adult.

Change of Metaphors

I recently had the good fortune of being on a Co-Counselling training programme where I explored the internal pressure I experience between multiple options. I awoke from a dream that I found very unsettling. I was in a skyscrapper, bottom floor, that was on fire, and I fled outside only to miss being hit by a falling person who dies right in front of me as he smashed into the pavement. I ran back through the building and realised the other side had even more people falling, dressed in the fineries, and that if I went that way I would surely die. The choice was stay in the building and burn and be crushed to death, or try leave and be killed by plummeting bodies.
I was able to work with this dream in a group session, having five people on each arm pulling my arms in different directions. As a large man I did not feel overly troubled by the pressure, and was then open to and surprised with how much forward and backward movement was available. While being stretched in two directions, the attempt being to rip me apart, I started to see myself as soaring like a eagle, riding thermals, and quite capable of moving through life, without having to respond directly to pressure. I found a new sense of freedom, a way to work with the fog arising from pressure, and being more potent in the moment.
I have seen this tearing process occur in my current relationship, where my interests and desires and availability for the relationship do not match my partners, and tension and pressure build up, pushing me for a decision. A decision in such moments will tend towards breaking up, dissatisfaction being a major driver. In allowing myself to soar, to be less caught in the tension, I have found a greater depth of experience with H, and a greater peace within. I don’t have to know what will happen between us RIGHT NOW! And I can let it unfold in its own good time, or until I recognise clearly where I want to be from some other process.
I spend so much time being torn when I could in fact use the pressure to support my soaring and flight and develop a whole new way of Being, thriving instead of surviving.

Fear-Based Reactions vs. Power-Based Responses

It is well established that Fight or Flight are fundamental survival modes, driven from the Amygdala, the reptilian brain as part of the brain stem. Freeze is well represented in nature, the freezing of the rabbit or the deer in headlights, confused over what to do, or hoping stillness will result in the threat passing. It can also be the denial that anything is happening. Finally, the fourth reaction is Fabricate, the use of masks or camouflage to attempt to throw off the threat. This is a higher order reaction to fear, represented by the chameleon, and by so many disingenuous people on this planet.
Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fabricate are all fear-based, and reactions because they are initiated when confronted with some form of threat. The threat may be physical danger, emotion upset, mental confusion or a host of other possibilities. They can be essential to survival (dodging a speeding car!) but overused they can set a negative basis for life that is focused on dealing with fears and only short-term outcomes.
When working from personal power, experiencing life and consciously engaging from a place of innate power, has a very different outcome. For each of the fear-based reactions there is a power-based response that takes a longer-term, strategic view of a situation. The responses are Assert (Fight), Attend (Flight), Freeze (Act), and Authenticate (Fabricate). While survival reactions are essential, conscious development and application of the power-based responses has greater capacity to create a meaningful life, focused on thriving rather than surviving.

Introduction

The first 35 years of my life were spent living in a self-constructed box, established to keep me safe, restrict my experience of life, ensure my emotional world was as smooth as possible. It did not work, but it was “existing” in the best way I knew. Since that time I have been on a journey of exploration and discovery, opening up to my inner world, living more fully in the outer world, and connecting with my authentic self with greater ease. Each defence mechanism I have removed has exposed me to more life, but the deconstruction process also creates rubble, stirs up dust, and may leave me stumbling for a while as I learn a new way of Being.
The confusion and chaos is what I refer to as fog. It is a necessary aspect of personal growth and development. It is to be embraced and engaged with, and appreciated for the learning it offers. Fog is a call to get more intimate with oneself. Attempting to push on, move forward fast when shrouded in fog is likely to end with injury or losing yourself. Fog invites you to slow down, be still, take stock of your surroundings. More specifically it is an invitation to explore within, connect with and love Self, and establish a solid foundation to move from once the fog has cleared.
My intention with this blog is to expand on the idea of appreciating the fog by sharing my insights as I get them, drawing on past or emerging experience to solidify my concepts. I am also exploring the interrelationship of sharing my ideas and working with what that creates in others and returns to me. I am on a journey and this blog is part of it.
Join me if you choose...